Yes, I think it is very romantic and I’m glad I got to read it because I had no idea it existed. It is a beautiful love song, immensely sad but somehow hopeful at the same time. Here it is.

a painting by Pino Daeni

Paul McNeely

By Edgar Lee Masters(from the Spoon River Anthology, 1916)

DEAR Jane! dear winsome Jane!How you stole in the room (where I lay so ill)In your nurse’s cap and linen cuffs,And took my hand and said with a smile:“You are not so ill—you’ll soon be well.”And how the liquid thought of your eyesSank in my eyes like dew that slipsInto the heart of a flower.Dear Jane! the whole McNeely fortuneCould not have bought your care of me,By day and night, and night and day;Nor paid for you smile, nor the warmth of your soul,In your little hands laid on my brow.Jane, till the flame of life went outIn the dark above the disk of nightI longed and hoped to be well againTo pillow my head on your little breasts,And hold you fast in a clasp of love—Did my father provide for you when he died,Jane, dear Jane?

I don't know, so many different feelings, I feel a bit like I've been in some spinning game, turned by others hands, round and round, then stopped suddenly, and expected to walk forward minus my bearings.I think of love, of care and attention, of fantasy and longing, of death, of being trapped physically but not emotionally, I am happy, I am sad. I think of youth and of not getting a full turn (at life). I think of the enduring part of love and care. And I think of you, Vesper, inspiring someone so, that he would think of you as he recites such words and then send them on to you.And having sequenced through, I start again with the first.Thus I am dizzy and can not fully claim my emotional or intellectual mind.

In Search of Lost Time

A Member of the Shameless Lions Writing Circle

He leaped at me
from the faded tiles of
Ishtar's procession.
His claws sank deep
into my flesh,
the dust of all illusions upon us.
"What seek you?" he rumbled. "The brilliance
is gone,
the gold is ashes."
"One named Alexander," I said.
"He was once a god."

My Heart Only

In the orchard of pink grapefruit, I walk.
What gleams, what sparkles, so lively, so slyly,
In the hot well of this darkness?
No stars in the high, no glow worms in my skirts.
Only your eyes, your glare of sapphire.
Your mighty roar echoes for me alone,
Sweet and bitter.
Do not devour me, lion of my heart.
Let us sacrifice this ripe grapefruit.